A twice-weekly syndicated newspaper column on California public affairs.

Monday, September 24, 2018

POIZNER SEEKING A CALIFORNIA ELECTORAL MILESTONE

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, OCTOBER 12, 2018,
OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

“POIZNER SEEKING A CALIFORNIA ELECTORAL MILESTONE”

If
there’s a theme to Steve Poizner’s independent campaign for state insurance
commissioner, it might be “back to the future.”

Poizner,
a former Silicon Valley entrepreneur who held the office four years and ran it
in a more nonpartisan fashion than anyone since insurance commissioners became
elected officials in 1988, always said his office should be independent of
political parties. Now he’s trying to make that into reality.

In
fact, insurance issues rarely concern big social causes like abortion, guns and
immigration. Where they sometimes intersect with politics, as in race-related
red-lining, climate change or health insurance company mergers, insurance
regulators need to be scrupulously fair and even-handed.

But
Poizner could not eliminate politics in his earlier go-‘round, forced to pick
one party or another if he wanted any electoral credibility. That was before
voters created the top-two primary system in a 2010 ballot proposition, a
change that led him to re-register with no party preference last year. In June
he became the first independent to win a statewide California primary in more
than a century.

He
topped Democrat Ricardo Lara, a soon-to-be-termed-out state senator from Los
Angeles, by just over 31,000 votes, but faces Lara again this fall. Even though
one August poll showed Poizner six points ahead of Lara, the ex-commissioner
has no easy task in trying to win one more term in his old office. For a second
Democrat won more than 813,000 primary votes and Lara is likely to pick up most
of them.

Lara
has also been highly visible in the Legislature, especially lately. He’s been
an activist in the sanctuary movement to protect non-criminal illegal
immigrants from deportation. He authored a new law prohibiting insurance
companies from cancelling or failing to renew homeowner policies in fire areas
and their immediate surroundings for one year after a state of emergency is
declared. And more.

But
the Poizner campaign represents a landmark. It’s common for the 25 percent-plus
of California voters who are registered Republican to gripe about one-party
government in Sacramento, and the marginally larger corps of
no-party-preference voters often voices the same complaint.

But
Democrats have such a large voter registration plurality with more than 44
percent of all registered voters that it would take a remarkable candidate to
break their stranglehold on statewide offices.

Poizner
might fit that bill. Even though he conducted an unsuccessful primary election
run for governor in 2010, he now presents himself not as an ambitious
politician, but as a problem solver taking care of everyone, no matter their
political inclinations.

“You
don’t want to be tied to one political party or the other,” he said in an
interview. “When you’re tied to one, all kinds of things come up. I got
political pressure when I was commissioner, but I won’t name names. My four
years there tells me when you have business before the Department of Insurance,
it should be about protecting consumers and making sure they have lots of
positive, healthy choices when shopping for insurance.”

Poizner
adds that “I could say something similar about lots of other state agencies,
too, like the controller and the secretary of state.”

But
everyone now running for those offices has a strong party affiliation. One
reason, of course, is that it costs a lot of money to run statewide campaigns,
even for secondary offices. Few can get that cash without a strong party
connection. But Poizner made a fortune estimated at as much as $1 billion by
founding and later selling two high-tech companies and has so far kicked a
total of $500,000 into his campaign and raised about $1 million more from
others.

If
Poizner can win, it’s just possible California might get started toward some
kind of alternative to the two extremely ideological major political parties.
Up to now, there has been no credible alternative.

Says
Poizner, “It’s been incredibly liberating to be independent. Both parties are
not problem solvers. But I just want to run and serve again, and the open
primary system we now have in California might just allow me to do that.”

-30-

Email
Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough,
The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch
It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias
columns, visit www.californiafocus.net

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About Me

Thomas Elias writes the syndicated California Focus column, appearing twice weekly in 88 newspapers around California, with circulation over 2.2 million.
He has won numerous awards from organizations like the National Headliners Club, the California Newspaper Publishers Association, the Los Angeles Press Club, and the California Taxpayers Association. He has been nominated three times for the Pulitzer Prize in distinguished commentary.
Elias is the author of two books, "The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government's Campaign to Squelch It" (now in its third edition; also published in Japanese and recently optioned for a television movie) and "The Simpson Trial in Black and White," co-authored with the late Dennis Schatzman.